I have a friend who lives in a rural neighborhood of a nearby county. He loves the country and is a committed environmentalist. A major portion of his winter heat comes from a high efficiency wood stove, and, with the consent of the power company, he gathers scrap wood that falls in the clearings that are cut for the right-of-ways of the electricity lines. Itâs a real win-win situation.

Or at least it was until he was taken to court by a neighbor who claimed my friend had infringed on his property rights. It seems that the wood that falls more than thirty feet from the center of the single-lane roadway actually lies on private property. While clearing some fallen limbs, my friend had strayed from five to maybe as much as fifteen feet within his neighborâs property in a heavily wooded, rural area. So the neighbor filed criminal trespass charges and now threatened my friend with major fines and some jail time.Ê

On behalf of my friend, I went to visit the neighbor to attempt a mediation. I was thoroughly unsuccessful, but I received a new lesson in the power of the rights to private property. This neighbor was defending a fundamental value of the American dream ÷ the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A manâs home is his castle. He had worked to acquire this property; it was his to enjoy. Trespass was a criminal offense, and taking anything off of private property was stealing. He explained to me, "I am defending our God-given American system, and your friend," he told me, "is no better than a common criminal."

I went to court with my friend. Happily, the judge showed some wisdom. He upheld the charges and so vindicated the American system, but he only fined my friend a minimal fee and reduced all charges to a simple misdemeanor, freeing my friend from a life as a convicted felon. I havenât heard yet how the neighborâs case against the power company came out.

We Americans take our property rights seriously. We have deeds, legal descriptions, titles, boundary markers and fences clarifying our territorial claims. In my neighborhood there are lots of fences. I am bounded by the street on one side and my neighborâ fences on two others. Only one side is open, land to land. On that side my neighbor is not real sure where the division is between our properties, so he generously mows five feet or so over our common border, therefore beautifying both. Thatâs fine with me, unless he mows down my daylilly bed again, and then I may be forced to erect a fence to clearly define whose is whose.Ê

I enjoy my postage stamp of the American dream. My own piece of property. It is mine. I feed my birds; I can rake the leaves or let them lie; I can plant a tree or cut one down. These are the values of the American dream, and Iâm living it.

Now at first blush, it might seem that this parable in our Gospel today is a story in defense of these property rights. After all, the owner of the vineyard has his rightful claim upon the tenants. But if we look deeper, we may see a problem that subverts our usual ways of thinking. If we let Jesusâ story have some allegorical character, it becomes likely that the vineyard is the earth, and the owner of the vineyard is God. We then are the tenants, and not the property owners. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, "Ownership of the vineyard is not the issue. It is not for sale and never will be. The owner is not looking for buyers; he is looking for tenants who will give him his share of the produce at harvest time, which means that the real issue is stewardship " a word that puts most of us on the defensive because it challenges our sense of ownership.

ã...Our ancestors became divine tenants so long ago that most of us have forgotten the circumstances. Somewhere along the way someone misplaced the tenantâs agreement and wrote up a deed instead. The landowner spent most of his time in another country, after all, and he was surprisingly easy to handle. When he sent messengers to remind the tenants of their agreement, all it took was a little burst of violence and those who were still alive ran away empty-handed. The owner could have sent the police, I guess, or recruited his own army of thugs. He could have returned violence for violence, but he did not. He just kept sending messengers, one after the other, each of them pleading with the tenants to come to their senses and honor their agreement with the owner of the land.

"Finally, when there was a whole row of unmarked graves full of messengers outside the vineyard walls, the owner sent his son ÷ unaccompanied and unarmed ÷ to teach the tenants some things they had clearly forgotten. He reminded them that ownership was a game they were playing, that they were guests on the earth, not rulers, and that there was good news in that, because being guests relieved them of certain responsibilities they were not equipped to handle, like deciding who got to be rich and who got to be poor and who got to work and who did not and whose claims to full humanity should be honored and whose should be denied." (Gospel Medicine, p. 98-99)

As tenants weâve got more than we could ever hord for ourselves. We have a beautiful and majestic world given into our hands to enjoy, with the modest request that we take care of it all and that we return a portion to God. Thatâs not because God needs it ÷ God gives that portion right back to us ÷ but because we need to be givers too, like God. And we need to understand our place as grateful guests and stewards in this marvelous creation.Ê

Itâs good to remember who we are and whose we are. To quote Barbara Brown Taylor once more: "We are Godâs sharecroppers. We tend the earth and its riches on someone elseâs behalf. We are expected to represent Godâs interests, being as generous with each other as God is with us. We are not owners. We were never meant to be. It is not the American way, but it is the kingdom way." (ibid, p. 100)

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